Poster Saturday. The M-1 does my talking. . .

This World War Two poster is one of those which remains popular today, but for some reason we rarely see the entire poster.  This poster was one of many that was designed to relate industrial production directly to the war effort, in this case the production of ammunition.

The central feature of the poster, of course, is an infantryman with his M1 Garand.  The M1 had been adopted in the 1930s after the culmination of an Army program to replace bolt action rifles with a semi automatic rifle.  Work on semi automatic rifles for this purpose actually commenced in 1919 with the first prototype of John C. Garand's rifle being made in a very introductory stage in the 1920s.  The rifle was adopted in 1936 with the first production models being made in 1937, but not before a civilian designed competitor, the Johnson, made a final run at the Garand in the late 1930s.

The rifle had some early teething problems and critics but rapidly proved itself to be vastly superior to any other rifle used by any other combatant.  By the time this poster was issued it had achieved lasting fame.